What happens in America when a black intellectual who was born into the crushing poverty of the Jim Crow South dares stand up to challenge white liberal Democratic orthodoxy?
He is marginalized, socially hamstrung, ridiculed in ugly racist terms and compared by a leading liberal journalist to “chicken eating preachers” taking “crumbs from the white man’s table.”
He is depicted in racist cartoons as a smiling lawn jockey, and a grinning shoeshine boy polishing a white man’s boots.
This is how American politics revealed itself to conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas Jr.
“License is given to others to attack you any way they want to. You’re not really black because you’re not doing what we expect black people to do,” Thomas says in the stirring and deeply emotional documentary on his life, “Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words.”
The film is in theaters, released at the beginning of Black History Month. It will not receive a media buzz, because Thomas’ story is deeply threatening to the liberal orthodoxy.
And it threatens Joe Biden, now campaigning for president, who was one of those white liberal Democratic senators who tried to destroy Thomas and failed.
The climax is Thomas’ confrontation with white Senate Democrats, liberals who sought to destroy him using unproven, uncorroborated allegations by Anita Hill that he was a sexual predator.
As he was being excoriated in those hearings, Thomas was asked if he considered withdrawing his nomination. He said he’d rather die than withdraw.
“Created Equal" is the story of the journey of a hero, of lost archetypes and lost faith, and of one man’s descent into anger and violence.
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